Earnhardt was voted NASCAR’s most popular driver for the 10th straight year last season, continuing to own an award that his large fan base takes great pride in.

Patrick, racing’s biggest female star, won the award in the Nationwide Series and many have wondered if her immense popularity could be a threat to Earnhardt as she moves to the Sprint Cup Series full time this year.

Patrick said Monday that Earnhardt fans shouldn’t worry.

“I don’t want to make any of them mad,” she said.

Patrick said during the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour Monday that she is grateful for the award last year, but is not counting on winning it again in the Sprint Cup Series.

“It was a big honor last year to be most popular driver in the Nationwide Series, especially being my first full-time year in NASCAR. It tells me that the fans are receiving me well,” said Patrick, who finished 10th in the standings in her first full NASCAR season last year.

“Between that and all of our partners voting online — I’m sure we hassled them every week — that was nice. But I just need to be myself and if that happens, it happens.

“I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to show some personality and character this year. We’ll just have to see if that is enough to make it interesting. Dale obviously has a huge following and he does a great job and he deserves it. We’ll just play it day by day.”

Patrick drove for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports team during her three seasons in Nationwide — which might have helped her with Most Popular votes — but will not drive for the team this season.

She will run the full Cup schedule for Stewart-Haas Racing and is hoping to run about 10 Nationwide races for Turner-Scott Motorsports, but that deal is not done yet.

Though she expects her large fan base to follow her to the Sprint Cup Series, Patrick does not plan to campaign for the most popular award. She has more Twitter followers — more than 600,000 — than almost every driver, but does not plan to use that to her advantage.

“That’s a really awkward place for me to be in, I feel really weird voting for me,” she said. “I know that my assistant and everybody on my team reached out to my sponsors and my followers and everybody and asked them to vote, and I’m flattered that they did. But that’s an awkward place for me to be in.

“All I can do is go out and be the personality that I am, whether you like it or not, and if it resonates with people, it does. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. No matter what happens, if I never get most popular driver, I know I have a great following and I know I have a lot of great fans and it won’t ever change that opinion for me and it shouldn’t for anyone else either.

“I’m a lucky driver, I’m really lucky. It’s not really a concern for me. Those are the things that just sort of happen and if they go your way, they do, and if they don’t, it’s not a big deal.”